Dear friends, We hope that everybody is doing fantastic! We've had a very quiet winter so far which has been great as we adjust to our new lifestyle with our baby boy! Mayz is doing fantastic, he's eating well, sleeping well, and is just all around a good little guy and Cheridy is loving being his Mama. We have definitely been really blessed!!! We are still currently in our administrative season and it has been really nice to finally start working away at a crazy "to do" list which has been knocked down from 160 to 38 in the last few months. With the photo shooting season coming up quick, we're trying to get as much done as possible!!

A few weeks ago we had a really fun time doing photos with our friend Frank Lombardo. The three of us were coming up with fun ideas for pics with Mayz and we all got to take turns shooting. Frank let me do the editing which he knows is the most fun part for me. Overall, doing family pictures was a super fun experience and it provided us images that we'll appreciate forever. It made me even more thankful that this is OUR JOB, and we get to bring this joy to other people!! You can see a slideshow with the rest of the pics here. Thanks for some great images Frank!! These will be up all over our walls. In fact, I took a few of the pictures and used Corel Painter to create some really cool painterly canvas prints for our bedroom. The one on the left is one that I took when he was about 1 week old.

Basic Photography Class - sign up now!!
My next basic photography class will be starting in a few weeks. I think there are almost 18 people registered right now and with only a few spots left, make sure to register as soon as possible if you want to be a part of it. There will be classroom study, hands on photography, and a discussion over images shot by each student.
The class starts Thursday Feb. 21st. Registration can be done at Kensington Art School Website.

Last month we photographed our first Bar Mitzvah. It was a great experience mostly due to getting to work with a fantastic family. The guest of honor, Will, was a really polite young man and he was very easy to photograph. These type of events are perfect jobs for us in the winter and we hope to shoot more of them next year.

Upgraded home office
As many of you know, we work out of our home studio. It's nice working at home, but it also has its difficulties. We have a very open layout in our house which we liked, but it also made it difficult when our baby Mayz needed a bit of loud time. We decided to make some changes around our house and had some walls built, some french doors put in, etc. I now have a more secluded office area to work in which has been great. During this process, we also ended up getting our whole interior of the house painted...it's so nice to have some color on the walls. We lived with boring white walls for too long! If you need a good handyman, the guy that did all the work for us is Jay Pregizer 248-563-5830, tell him we sent you. While doing all that, we also got a new roof, a new security system, a new xerox document printer, a new camera...now it's time for us to make money and stop spending it!!
The space that we have is pretty small, but we try to make the most of it. Both sets of doors and part of the walls (in the right picture below) are new to help close things off. The new production office area isn't shown because...well...that's just a mess!

Fundraiser - Thank you!!
A few weeks ago, the guys from my mens bible study group had a fundraiser for City Mission to help raise money to sponsor a child's education in Detroit. I just wanted to thank all the people who came out, I think the group raised approximately $2000 so we really appreciate your support and generosity. I posted just a couple pics on our blog.

Winter fun
We hope that everyone is enjoying the winter or at least bearing it!! I've definitely found myself being a bit envious of my neighbors with snow blowers as there has definitely been lots of shoveling this winter...much more than last year!!
There were a couple days that were just absolutely gorgeous so I had to grab my camera and head out to the nearby park. We blew this image up to 30x50 canvas gallery wrap print and have it hung in our main entryway which is now freshly painted blue and white.. A few more winter pics are on our blog along with a couple of Mayz dressed up like a snowman.